I am completely impressed with Singapore, and it's not just the food. Well, much of it is the food. After all, the food is incredible. Hainan chicken has been a favorite for a while. Before I knew its name, some coworkers introduced me to this dish at a hopping joint 5 minutes from Mori Tower. But in Singapore, Hainan chicken has reached the level of perfection. We got a chance to try two versions -- the first from a stall in Maxwell's food court, and the second from Golden Mile Thien Kee Steamboat (a Chinese restaurant, not in fact a steamboat). Both were incredible, and very likely stops 1 and 2 next time I find myself in Singapore.
Besides the food, though, I fully appreciated the deeply international feeling one gets from Singapore even during brief stints of exploration. Signage is nearly always quadrilingual (and sometimes nearly philisophical), and it was exciting to hear the diversity of languages mingling on the trains. It's not completely unlike something one might experience on muni, but it seems to me conversations in Cantonese or Spanish (even in the Californian context) are still considered foreign. On the other hand, it almost seems hard to consider any language foreign in a country where four (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil) rather than one are classified as official. This is, of course, a foreigner's perspective, and a 2-day visitor at that.
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